


The dragons borne of the sun

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Civil War, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-02 23:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5267306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baelor Targaryen has always faced accusations of being more Dornish than is good for him. He has avoided any true ill-will from those accusations thus far, but now, he may just have pushed the Seven Kingdoms too far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A princess of the Iron Throne

**Author's Note:**

> Valarr is born Valla, and things spiral from there. Enjoy!

**i.**

Valla is eight years old the first time she speaks the words her father has been dreading.

"Why does Grandfather talk about Matarys as your heir?"

Baelor is a great warrior, a great politician, heir to the Iron Throne and mayhaps the most unpopular man in Westeros, in certain circles. He is a good brother, a good husband, and, he hopes, a good father, but in this, he feels helpless.

"North of the marches," he says slowly, "women are not allowed to inherit things like crowns, my sweet."

Valla, sitting on his lap with a circlet of white gold and pale amethysts holding back her two-toned hair from her narrow little face, seems to consider this, furrowing her brow and taps her fingers against her chin, looking so much older than her scant few years, looking so much like Baelor's lady mother, like his long-gone and hard-missed grandmother.

"I think that Grandmother would dislike that," Valla says firmly, as though that settles any argument Baelor might set forth. For Valla, he supposes that it does - the only person his daughter loves more than Mariah Martell is Jena Dondarrion, and maybe her brother, and Baelor cannot fault her taste. 

Grandmother and Jena's word tends to be law, in Valla's simple world, even against his own or his father's. Matarys, who is six, and the sweetest child to have ever lived, tends to believe near anything he is told by anyone save for his cousin Aerion.

_Why does Grandfather talk about Matarys as your heir?_

Because the world is unjust, and had Daeron Targaryen's first grandchild been a boy and not a girl, that child would be hailed as a bright future for House Targaryen.

Instead, Valla is a princess, and nothing else, and promised to the second child of the Lady of Godsgrace, a handsome boy two years her senior by the name of  _Prospero,_ of all things, and will have no crown.

Not with the law as it is, anyways.

**ii.**

Matarys is the one who helps Valla disguise herself as a boy, so she might join the hunt. He is eight and she is ten now, both tall and strong with their mother's long limbs and Baelor's own broad shoulders, and it is easy to pass Valla off as a boy, especially when the fashion is for boys to wear their hair long.

In clothes stolen from Jena does not know where, with her hair scraped back and held in place with a strip of leather, Valla looks like any other little boy of the court. The silvery fringe of hair by her face is harder to discern when it is tied into the brown, and there are plenty of boys her height who are so girlishly pretty that she does not seem out of place at all.

And, well, Valla ahorse is a marvel - she and Matarys learned to ride from Jena herself, and from their lady grandmother, and Baelor, too, when he has the time to spend with them, and there are no finer riders in the Seven Kingdoms, Jena is sure of it, not for their ages. 

And besides, Valla was in no danger - she and Matarys are fiercely protective of one another, and Jena cannot imagine that there was not a single brother of the Kingsguard who did not piece together enough to realise that they had a princess as well as a passel of princes under their watch.

Knowing that does not keep Baelor from losing his slow temper with Ser Willem, who was supposed to be watching the children.

Jena has only seen her husband lose his temper very rarely - he is by nature a peaceful man, for all his skill at arms and war, and has too much respect for the men who have sworn their lives to his family to rage at them for even things that deserve his anger.

But this, endangering his beloved daughter? Jena knows of nothing else that can anger him so quickly and completely. 

Baelor loves both of their children, she knows this - Matarys has much of Baelor's nature, but a sweetness all his own to temper the delicacy of his feelings, and they can often be found in oddly serious conversation, discussing anything from dragons to what might be served at dinner that night. Jena adores Matarys, loves him in the way her mother had loved her brothers, but it is Valla who holds Baelor's heart more than anyone else in the world, more even than herself or his mother, more even than his beloved baby brother, Maekar. 

Maekar, who is Baelor's truest friend and who was Jena's first friend at court. Maekar, who knows and understands Baelor in a way that escapes Jena but does not know him at all in the ways that she does, and it is in that shared love for Baelor that she and Maekar first found grounds for friendship. That is why she goes to Maekar when Baelor's anger burns so brightly and so long that it begins to frighten her.

Maekar seems less surprised by his brother's rage than Jena is, which also frightens her.

"Valla is his special pet, sister," Maekar says, as though it is nothing. "He has always favoured her - is it so surprising that her safety and security are of such import to him? I think not."

Baelor  _has_ always favoured Valla, and that, too, frightens Jena. She loves her husband, but she has never quite been able to ignore the whispers that name him a Dornishman, and her family has always been an enemy of Dorne.

**iii.**

Valla is twelve years old when Prospero Allyrion arrives at court. He is a year her junior, just as Matarys is a year junior to his wife-to-be, Lady Kiera of Tyrosh.

Valla would rather wed Kiera than Prospero, if she had a choice in the matter, if only because Kiera is so much funnier and more willing to help Valla sneak out to train with her lance. Prospero is handsome, though, for a boy, and clever - he likes Grandfather enormously, and openly admires Grandmother for her clever mind and her influence over the court.

Valla likes that about him - someone who likes her grandmother must have good taste at least some of the time, and must be at least partway sensible. He likes Father as well, and anyone who does not like her father is a fool.

So she likes Prospero, more or less, and thinks Kiera might be good enough for Matarys, which is more important.

Father brings them both for a long walk in the gardens, Valla and Matarys, brings them to the godswood, where no one ever goes, so that he might speak to them in private.

"You have no interest in being King, my sweet boy," he says, sitting on the grass with his legs folded, one of them on either side of them. "And I do not blame you - a crown is a burden so heavy that none but us might understand it."

Matarys is blushing when Valla tears her eyes away from Father's face, embarrassed that Father has seen through his smiles to his fears. Valla has always helped Matarys hide that fear, has always stood as his guard in much the same way Uncle Maekar stands as Father's, or at least so she has hoped.

"But you, my little princess," Father says, "you have always had a Queen in you, haven't you?"

Valla is the one who blushes now, because yes, it is true that she has wanted a crown for as long as she has understood what that entails. She has always known that she will never have a crown, of course, beyond that which is her right as a Princess, and so has thrown all her determination into ensuring that Matarys becomes the best King he is capable of being.

"Many feel that I am too Dornish," Father says. "I take more after my mother than my father, it is true, in more than just my looks - but in this, I have both their support, and that of your uncle Maekar and his lady wife." 

"In what, Father?" Matarys asks, as guileless as ever. Valla has been hoping for this day for as long as she has understood just how enormous a thing it might be for her father to attempt, and has known that it would likely never come to pass.

Her lady mother, she suspects, does not approve of this. Mother is a Marcher, and dislikes all things Dornish save for Father and Grandmother, and sometimes Aunt Dyanna, and so of course she will dislike this. Valla feels just a little guilty for how little that worries her, but it has always been her lord father's approval and love she sought before her lady mother's. 

"If you agree to support your sister in all she pursues," Father says, his dark eyes on Matarys', and for once, it is Matarys who looks more like him than Valla, "I would make her my heir, little prince."

Matarys hesitates for just a moment before speaking.

"I would not have to be King?" he asks carefully, glancing between Father and Valla as if suspecting this to be some sort of elaborate jape. 

"Indeed not, lad," Father says. "You might establish a branch of House Targaryen in Tyrosh, with your Lady Kiera, or you might-"

"Might I join the Kingsguard?" Matarys breaks in eagerly. "Oh, Father, might I become a brother of the Kingsguard? I should like that, then I could protect Valla always!"

"And what of Lady Kiera?"

"Daeron is always making eyes at her," Matarys insists. "Oh,  _please,_ Father, might I squire to you or Uncle Maekar and become a brother of the Kingsguard? I have never wanted to be King, Valla is much better suited to it than I am,  _please,_ Father!" _  
_

**iv.**

Mother departs for Blackhaven two days after Father informs the small council of his plans to make Valla his heir. She kisses Matarys goodbye, smooths Valla's hair away from her face, and turns her back to Father.

Valla holds tight to Father's hand, in the hope that her presence and Matarys' might hold together his heart, which is so visibly breaking. 

"Your mother has her reasons for leaving," Father says, when it is just the three of them at table that night. "I hope that she will return soon, though."

**v.**

Mother does not return. The Blackfyres do, though.


	2. A Queen on the Iron Throne

War comes fast, comes sudden, and the grinds almost to a halt.

 

* * *

Valla sits at Grandfather's side when Father and Uncle Maekar come to make their farewells. Uncle Rhaegel is with them as well, standing just behind the two with his black armour edged in Aunt Alys' Arryn blue, although Valla knows that he will not be leading the army with his brothers. Rhaegel is more martial than Uncle Aerys, Valla is more martial than Uncle Aerys, but even so, he is no warrior. He is a Prince of House Targaryen, though, and that means that it is important that he present himself as part of their House's strength and splendour.

Father's armour is also black, as is Uncle Maekar's, Father's shining where Maekar's is plain, Father's helm ornamented with a golden circlet where Maekar's has only silver. Valla is sure that there are no finer men in all the world as her father and Uncle Maekar, and knows that they can defeat the Blackfyres, knows it in her very heart.

Lord Bloodraven, paler even than Uncle Maekar, with his bright eye and dark birthmark, is also there, in armour that shifts when Valla looks at it from the corner of her eye, and Valla hopes that he will be as faithful to Father and to Uncle Maekar as he has been to Grandfather.

 

* * *

 

 

There is a landing made near Cracklaw Point, where once Queen Visenya made allies, a landing made in the name of Daemon Blackfyre, the second of of that name, who Grandfather wishes were not being pushed to this end.

"He is only the same age as you, my sweet," he says, one slight arm around Valla's shoulders. "A boy, just as you are a girl, just as my sons were boys when we came to King's Landing, to make this throne mine."

He is not sitting the throne, not now, but they are in the throne room nonetheless - Grandfather has taken to sitting his councils here, either on the throne or in a fine carven chair at its foot. Valla has a chair at his side, to his right, smaller and less ornate than his but still grander than the rest around the table, and Uncle Aerys sits to his left, in a chair near a twin to Valla's.

Grandmother, too, has a seat at the table, and Aunt Dyanna, and Aunt Alys. There is a seat in which no one sits, too, beside Valla, between her and Grandmother. This seat is of Valla's chosen design, engraved in the deep back with forked lightning, and it should be Mother's, but Mother is still at Blackhaven, and did not even reply when Father wrote to tell her he was bound for war, bringing Matarys with him as a squire.

She chooses not to think of Mother's continued silence, because it hurts too much. Valla has not seen her lady mother in over a year, and wishes more than anything, sometimes, that she had told Father not to make her his heir, if that might have kept Mother with them.

 

* * *

 

 

The landing at Cracklaw Point is pushed back, but Father does not come home.

Worse, Matarys does not come home. Valla has never been more than a day or two without her little brother, since he was born, and she does not know what she is to do with herself.

Cousin Daeron and Cousin Aerion are away at war as well, squiring one for Uncle Rhaegel and the other for Uncle Maekar, and Valla misses even them - at least she has Cousin Aemon to fuss over, sometimes, but he is only a year old and too small for company, and the babe in Aunt Dyanna's belly will be even smaller, even less use to her.

Valla wishes for a distraction. She wishes for her family, home in King's Landing and safe. She wishes for Father, and Matarys, and Mother.

What she is given is Prospero Allyrion.

Prospero is sent to court for reasons unknown to Valla - if Matarys is old enough to squire, then Valla cannot understand why Prospero is away from the fighting - but he is at least some small distraction. He has no head for politics, which irritates her, because Valla has spent all the time since Father's departure learning politics from her grandparents, and from Aunt Dyanna, and the small council. Even Uncle Aerys, who so disapproves of this whole plan, has helped, perhaps because he believes that Matarys will die on the field.

Valla fears the same, but refuses to admit it aloud. She writes it down in the letters she does not send to her lady mother, and then casts her worries into the fire, along with her grief for her mother's continued absence.

"If this is all you will do as my husband," she tells Prospero one day, "then you will be a terrible husband indeed."

He has spent the day looking at horses, complaining about the quality of Grandfather's stables, so lovingly cared for and developed by Uncle Rhaegel and Aunt Alys, and any good will Valla bore him before, when he made Matarys smile, goes up in a cloud of smoke at how inelegant Prospero's acceptance of her anger and fear is.

 

* * *

 

 

Uncle Maekar returns for a flying visit, bringing only enough news to assure them that all their loves ones are yet living, that the Blackfyres have been pushed into retreat for now, and that he has much to do, and so he cannot linger.

Grandfather is visibly upset that Father did not choose to come himself, and Valla does her best to hide how upset she is - even with Grandfather and Grandmother, she feels desperately lonely, and wishes that Father had at least sent her a letter with Uncle Maekar.

Uncle Maekar takes a moment, before he leaves, to kneel before her in his dark black armour, his fair hair held back from his hard face by his usual simple circlet of silver, not unlike her own. He places his hands on her shoulders, meeting her eyes with his usual seriousness, and Valla feels so inadequate. She has always wanted to be Queen, has always wanted it, but now that it is within her grasp, she begins to wonder: does anyone else want her as Queen, save herself and Father?

She does not even look right to be a Queen. She does not have the fine silver-gold hair, or the silver-pearl skin, or the purpleish eyes. She looks too much like Father, or Grandmother, or Great-Uncle Maron, and here, with Uncle Maekar for comparison, it makes her want to weep.

"Our people will choose Daemon over me, won't they?" she asks, and although Uncle Maekar never has patience for weakness, his hands are gentle when he brushes away her tears with the very tips of his fingers.

"If they think to behave so foolishly," he promises her, "my brother and I will make them see sense, little niece. You have my word on that."

 

* * *

 

 

The Reach threatens to turn traitor almost before the Blackfyres make their second attempt in Daemon's name. Then it is the Westerlands, then the Iron Islands. Aunt Alys holds her brother in the Eyrie firm, and somehow, the Stormlands stay true, too.

Valla wonders if it is anything at all to do with her and Matarys' Marcher blood, and wishes she could ask Mother if there are such suitably close ties between Blackhaven and Storm's End to encourage such loyalty. It hurts her that she does not know, and hurts more that she cannot ask.

But the Reach, oh, the Reach is their greatest danger - Grandfather has no ties, and Grandmother being who she is only serves to alienate the Tyrells and their bannermen, and so it falls to Valla, nearing fourteen years and the most readily outspoken member of her grandfather's small council, to suggest a means of bringing them back into the fold.

"Daeron is unwed," she says slowly, wishing she might apologise to Matarys for ruining his hopes of a place on the Kingsguard - if Daeron is to wed the Reach, then Matarys must wed Lady Kiera, and if he is wed, then he cannot have a white cloak. "As is Aerion - if one of them were to wed a Tyrell, and the other a Lannister, then..."  
"Then they have no choice but to support us," Grandfather agrees. "But who to who, and when?"

"Soon," Grandmother says, and yet more worries pile on Valla's shoulders - what if she was wrong to do this? What if wedding her cousins to ambitious women drives them to push her aside? What if she is the cause of another war?

 

* * *

 

_Please come home, Mama. I am so afraid._

* * *

_Father wrote to tell me that Matarys has been injured, Mama. Please come home. We need you._

* * *

 

_Matarys is home and he might lose his leg. If you loved us at all, Mama, you would come._

 

* * *

 

 

Matarys does lose his leg, and Valla weeps pure rage as he sleeps after the amputation, rage at the bastard who injured him, rage at Father for once more making Uncle Maekar his messenger, rage at Mother for staying away when they need her so completely.

"Come away, little one," Grandmother says quietly. "You and I ought to have words, I think."

She lets Grandmother lead her away, lets Grandmother take her by the hand and lead her deep into the godswood, where this all went so terribly wrong.

"Once," Grandmother says, "I was the other side of your coin."

And that is the day that Valla truly understands just how difficult it was for her grandmother to wed her grandfather - oh, Mariah Martell loves Daeron Targaryen with a terrible fire, but it was not always so. Once, Grandmother was heir to Dorne. Once, she was to wed a boy she loved, and mother the line of House Nymeros Martell such as would rule Dorne to the end of time.

Instead, she was sold to make peace, sold to the hated dragons in the north, and told that her inheritance was not hers at all.

"So you see, my sweetling," Grandmother says, "you and I are not so different - simply reversed in our circumstances."

Grandmother was a Princess who did not wish to be a Queen, but who was made one regardless, Valla a Queen-in-Waiting who has always wanted to be such, and would now be anything other than what she is.

"Come, little love," Grandmother says softly, wrapping her strong old arms around Valla and drawing her close. "Come now, let free your grief and fear. I am here, my dove. Grandmother is here."

 

* * *

 

 

Grandmother might be here, but Mother is yet away. Valla wishes she might hate her lady mother for that.

 

* * *

 

 

She cannot help but scream, when she is brought before Father upon his return. 

Uncle Maekar had warned her that Father's injuries were considerable, but even so, she was not prepared for this. The foul smell of rot, the puss and blood staining the bandages, the unfocused shine of his bared eye - surely this cannot be her own lord father?

"Hello, my little princess," Father says, holding out a hand to her, beckoning her close. When she is near enough to sit on the edge of his bed, she first reaches out a hand, touching two fingers to the breaks in his nose, to assure herself that he truly is real, that he truly is here, with her.

"I have missed you so much, Papa," she says, and then she cannot help but weep, and throw herself into his waiting embrace. "So much, Papa, I-"

"I know, sweetling," he promises. "I know, I swear it to you."

 

* * *

 

 

"Lord Prospero of the House Allyrion will wed not my granddaughter, Princess Valla," Grandfather announces from his seat high up on the Iron Throne, "but my niece, Princess Daenera Martell, daughter of my most beloved sister, Daenerys."

Valla, seated in her usual seat, with Grandmother to her right and Father to her left, in the elaborate carven seat that is usually Grandfather's, does not know if she ought to be relieved or concerned. She is glad that she need not wed Prospero, who she liked well enough when he was not acting a spoiled brat, but she is also afraid of what might now be in store for her.

"Peace was brought to this realm once before by marriage," he continues, "and we will seek to do the same once more."

With Bittersteel dead - at Father's hand, not by means of a fine, castle-forged sword, but at the end of a well-aimed Dornish throwing spear - Grandfather is certain that the mad hatred for House Targaryen is gone out of the Blackfyres, and that they might be open to negotiation, to  _peace._

Valla had not realised that she would be a bargaining chip. She had not realised that she was to be made yet more similar to Grandmother.

 

* * *

 

 

Daemon Blackfyre, the second of that name, arrives at court on a sharp sort of day, all pale sunlight and chill breeze. 

Valla almost does not care. Daemon and all his entourage arrive in the morning, but such weak-blooded traitors matter not when compared with the arrivals of the evening.

Father is the one to greet her. He wears only a simple tunic of green wool, worn breeches and riding boots, and his hair is all a mess. He seems more stableboy than Prince of Dragonstone and Hand of the King, but then, Mother's hair is a tangle about her head, shining red in the pale light of the fading afternoon, and her Dondarrion purple skirts are almost brown with dust.

Valla waits in her rooms all afternoon, and well into the evening, waiting all the while for Mother to come to her, but Mother does not come. Grandmother does, and Aunt Dyanna, and Aunt Alys, all of them drawing out every ounce of beauty there is to be had from her face - Father's face, plainer than that of any Targaryen princess before her - and garbing her in elegant reds and blacks, Targaryen colours in the Dornish style, which best suits her too-tall, too-broad frame.

"Mama hates me, doesn't she?" she dares to ask, when Father comes to set a twisting-turning circlet of gold and twinkling opals on her hair, which has darkened near to the colour of his as she has grown, making the silver streaks that frame her face even more pronounced, and even odder to look upon. "That is why she does not come to me, isn't it?"

Father's anger is a rare thing, and all the more terrible for it. Valla has never been the target of his rage, so it frightens her when he spins her to face him and drops to his knees, so that their eyes are level - matching eyes, hers as dark as his and filling with tears already. 

"Your mother," he says, fierce and low, "loves your brother and you more than any other woman in this godsforsaken land loves her children. Do not  _dare_ speak so ill of her, child, not in my hearing or out of it. Do you understand?"

 

* * *

 

 

Daemon is presented to her at the grand feast that night, where she sits to Grandfather's left while Father sits to his right. 

He is her age, just as Grandfather told her, so long ago - six-and-ten, and as lovely to look upon as Uncle Maekar when he shares one of his impossibly rare smiles, or Aunt Dyanna when she is dressed her finest. Valla forces herself not to shrink from the predatory edge to his smile, instead straightening her shoulders and leaning forward to rest her chin on one upturned palm, a gesture both inviting and dismissive, learned from Aunt Alys. 

Mother is somewhere down the table, beyond Father, and she has not so much as raised her cup in greeting to Valla. Matarys is with her, though, which is something. Matarys has missed Mother more even than Valla has, and she can hear his laughter from here, and that is a gift in itself.

"You are welcome to King's Landing, nephew," Grandfather says, rising from his seat and extending his arms. The rings on his fingers are simple, the narrow chain of gold and silver links which hangs about his neck, a gift from Grandmother upon his ascent to the throne, his only other adornment aside from his crown, the too-heavy crown of his own father, Valla's great-grandfather. "Allow me to present my family."

He introduces them all, Father and his brothers, Matarys and their cousins, Mother and the aunts, and finally, after all is done, he rests one spindle-fingered hand on Valla's shoulder.

"This," he says, and the pride in his voice almost makes up for Mother's continued absence, "is my granddaughter, Princess Valla, who stands second-in-line to the Iron Throne. If you prove yourself worthy, nephew, you might be permitted to court her, and seek her hand."

Daemon Blackfyre, the second of that name, will be found worthy, and will make himself her King. Valla knows this, just as surely as she knows that there will be more wars, what with Aerion and his bitch of a Lannister wife whispering away to themselves in the western hills, and the Tyrells who circle poor Daeron like the sharks they are. 

She knows this, but still she smiles. She is to be Queen, and a Queen must put her realm first, even when all she wishes to do is weep. 

Grandmother taught her that.


End file.
